IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19994, 11 January 1927, Page 2

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

THE YELLOW EEL. By J. Dbcuuond. F.L.S., F.Z.S. “I am writing to let your readers know of an eel, rich lemon-yellow in colour, except for a patch of black on its tail and a small spot on the top of its nose,” Mr L. S. Mackie writes from Joll’s factory, Otakeho, Hawera. “A friend states that he has seen this eel at different times during the past 18 months in the Kaupokonui River, a clear snow-fed river that flows almost due soiith from Mount Egmont into the South Taranaki Bight. He saw it always in the same pool, and decided to try to get it alive. On December 20 he brought it to me. He fished with a cast and a small hook. The eel was feeding up and down the pool, swimming freely in the water, and not on the bottom. It took a worm off the hook. After a good deal of trying, he hooked it with a white grub, lie had some trouble in landing it without hurting it. As 1 have a box of eels in the creek, we put it in. It is very conspicuous amongst the dark eels. ■ The hook remained in its throat, but it seems lively enough at present, eight hours after it was caught.”

This cel evidently is the Maori’s tunatoke, “the eel that takes the worm as bait.” The yellow jacket does not seem to be peculiar to either the individual or the species. It merely marks a stage of development. Yellow eels are growing eels, annroaching the adult stage. An eel’s life begins in an egg. The first stage outside the prison walls of the egg is a larva, at first less than an inch long, which feeds on microscopic creatures in the sea. In its second year, it is the glassy, transparent, leaf-like or blade-like Leptoceplialus—“smooth-head” —which for 10U years puzzled naturalists, who did not associate it with the col. A length of about Sin is reached by the young eel in its third summer. An amazing change takes place in the fourth year. This has been described by Professor A. J. Thomson, of Aberdeen: “The body changes from a knife-blade shape to a cylindrical shape, about the thickness of a bone knittingneedle. The young eel becomes lighter in weight, and shorter. It is fasting, and is using the old material to build up the body on a new plan. As it is expending energy without income, it must become lighter. It has become an elver, about 2Jin long, and it is ready to ascend a river by taking part in an eel-fare.” It puts 'on its yellow costume, continues to grow, and when becoming fully grown changes into the dress of a grown-up.

A statement by a correspondent a few weeks ago that bush canaries feed young long-tailed cuckoos is supported by Mr C. Turner, Hokorua, Whaugamoa, Nelson. He saw them doing so in 18S5 or 1886 in the Rai Valley. Describing the incident, he writes: “We were attracted by a gurgling voice somewhat like the noise made by a young kingfisher. We found that it was made by a long-tailed cuckoo, nearly full-grown, which opened its mouth wide and held its wings about an inch from his body, with a sort of shivering motion. We saw bush canaries put food into its mouth. I have often seen tuis attack long-tailed cuckoos. They came almost close enough for me to touch them, in thick fallen bush. It seems strange that, although tuis were close to the bird that was being fed, they never attacked it. I have skinned quite a number of long-tailed cuckoos, and have found partly digested young birds in their stomachs, also large wetas, in some cases almost whole.”

Mr L. Morse, Kai Iwi, 13 miles north of Wanganui, has seen a harrier hawk fly after a female pheasant in a field of long grass, catch it, and kill it before ho got near. Ho has several times shot hawks that flew from dead pheasants. Ho brands the harrier as “the most destructive bird in New Zealand on game, young turkeys, ducks, and chickens. ’ He states that a harrier will take both eyes out of a cast sheep. His opinion is supported by 63 years' shooting in Now Zealand.

Mr Mackie and a friend are collectors of native flowering plants and ferns. They recently spent a day on the Kapuni River, not far from the Kaupokonui. Un most of the wh'itowoods there were enormous clumps of the yellow-berried mistletoe. They also found a native orchid, Gastrodia Cuniiinghamii. a leafless herb with brownish-white flowers half an inch long. It is not uncommon in dark, shaded places in the North Island, the South Island, Stewart Island, and the Cliatlumi.s, from sea-level to an altitude of 2000ffc. To the 1 Maoris, it is perei or makaika. In former times, before Europeans increased the food supplies, Maoris, particularly in the Urowera district, collected the starchy, thick and tuberous roots of this orchid, and used them for food. Its inconspicuous flowers should be blooming now, but they may be easily overlooked. A fern, Polkea rotundifolia. with fronda up to 14 inches long, is reported by Mr Mackie to be very plentiful there. A tree-fern, Dicksonia Janata, with a long, prostrate and rooting stem as thick as a man’s_ wrist, is present, also another fern, Asplenium hookerianum.

Several instances of Hawks killing other birds are recorded by Mr F. M'Curdy, Koru, Taranaki. In 1903, when he was cutting grass on Mr F. Easton’s property, on the Foxton side of the Manawatu River, the paddock was like a slaughteryard with the remains of pukekos killed by hawks. He watched the kill in an encounter between a hawk and a woodpigeon, near the Parapara River, Collingwood. Mr T. E. Hows, Otoroa, has often seen cast sheep whose eyes were pecked out by hawks. Ho in some cases has put sheep on their feet, with an eye taken. Ho reports that hawks sometimes kill young lambs. He has seen fowls and turkeys slain by hawks. He concedes that they may take a rabbit occasionally, but he does not think that they take many rats, except those they pick off new burns. He wishes acclimatisation societies to pay more for hawks’ feet. At every opportunity he kills hawks, without asking for payment.

The rare nest of the wood-pigeon has been seen by Mr M‘Curdy. While prospecting in the back country, he, like many other prospectors, has found interest and occupation in studying birds. When surveying for the May Moon Company, he ran a line across a dark flat on the loft side of the Waiotaura River, a branch of the Otaki. The land carried heavy beech and a thick undergrowth of pepper-wood. After he had set up the instrument under a largo pepper-wood he noticed that a fair number of wood-pigeons were flying around. One flew over his head. Looking closely, he found the nest. In it there was a young wood-pigeon, seen easily between the few sticks of which the nest was made. A.s many as eight nests were found there. Climbing down a steep rocksidling on the Taitapu Estate, Westhavon, he was attracted by a wood-piegon that flew out of scrub below him. He looked down into the nest, which cradled a young wood-piegon a few days old.

Verses by Miss E. Wilkinson, Wadestown, Wellington, in praise of ladybirds, are thoroughly well deserved by those pretty little insects. They have occupied —may still occupy even in these matter-of-fact days—an honourable position in English folklore and legend. In this young country many years ago, children were taught to hold a ladybird in the hand and recite the lines, “Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, your house is on lire, your children are gone,” and nobody seemed to have doubts as to the ladybird accepting the warning. Still, the poets have given ladybirds less attention than might be expected Their services to human beings certainly are not adequately recognised. These are greater in Now Zealand than in most countries, but, generally, ladybirds rank with the most beneficent insects. Although New Zealand’s 25 species may not do much appreciable good, they do no harm, as no ladybird is troublesome. To several species introduced from our next-door-neighbour, the Commonwealth, we owe a deep debt of gratitude. Australia's steel-blue ladybird helps to control scaleinsects on citrus trees and oaks in the Auckland province. Another Australian ladybird has extirpated the bluegum scale in large areas in New Zealand. A small Australian ladybird has become famous for its remarkable work in controlling the cottony-cushion scale in New Zealand, California, and South Africa. A fourth Australian member of the family was invited to take up its abode in the orchard districts of New Zealand, in order to check the mealy-bug. With all the willingness in the world, this ladybird cannot stand New Zealand’s cold winter, and its introduction has not been very successful, but it has controlled several species of mealy-bug in Hawaii and California. The most plentiful ladybird in New Zealand is a species, red with blacu spots, introduced from the Old Country, and well known there and in Europe. The measure of good it does is greatly reduced

by a parasite that attacks it relentlessly. The success of introduced ladybirds should justify efforts to introduce two parasitical insects to chock the earwig. which came from the Old Country without invitation. Both these parasites are members of a very largo family of flics whose grubs attack the grubs of other insects. One of the parasites lays its young grubs freely in the earwigs’ haunts, and the young attack the earwigs and bore into them. The other lays hard, soed-like eggs in the earwigs’ food. When earwigs swallow the seeds, the young parasites hatch out inside the earwigs’ bodies and feed on them.